Daily mobility in domestic spaces: lessons for a pandemic

Case Study: Santiago, Chile

The current quarantine has forced many of us to take shelter in our houses and apartments, making us acutely aware of the importance of the domestic environment in our daily lives. For many, our homes have become our total physical space, only complemented by virtual interactions and few permitted exits in times of pandemic.

This topic was of interest to our team at the Laboratorio de Estudios del Cotidiano (‘Everyday Life Laboratory’), or LEC, long before the pandemic. Based on six semi-structured interviews applied to inhabitants during 2012, we reconstructed a typical day at home of a group of residents in a building located in downtown Santiago (Chile), seeking to represent and understand the interaction between space, time and their daily life, and draw some reflections to have in mind for times of isolation.

Through this exercise, we sought to account for the importance of domestic space (and its architectural design) in the day-to-day life of the city's inhabitants, by paying close attention to a type of space that is usually overlooked by urban and territorial studies: the home. Although there are some classic examples of studies on domestic space in anthropology (Bourdieu & Douglas 1971; Miller, 2001), perhaps it is the architect Robin Evans in two of his essays (1971, 1978) who most clearly highlights the relation between the disposition of the domestic space and the daily life that occurs in those places.

Taking into account the radical changes in urban mobility under the Covid-19 pandemic, we consider it necessary to think about new ways of investigating the domestic space, in order to have inputs that allow us to rethink the design of future homes that are better prepared to face similar situations in the future.

The image shows a day in the life of 6 apartments in a building located in downtown Santiago. In the first (we will review them as a text, from left to right and from top to bottom) corresponds to a tenant living alone in a one-room apartment. According to the transitory nature of her home, she spends much of the day outside working, but uses almost all of her little space available, even transforming her bedroom in a room for multiple activities, thereby taking advantage of her retractable bed. She usually receives few people, normally family members, at the dining table. The bedroom sector is the most used space.

The second floor corresponds to an apartment inhabited by a young couple. They both occupy all the spaces of the apartment, but the woman usually spends more time of her day at home, with a great use of the bedroom and the kitchen, places where they usually share as a couple. On the contrary, when they invite people over, they use the social spaces of their home: the living room and terrace.

The third floor corresponds to a young couple with a 2-year-old daughter. Both adults leave home early for work and receive external help with the care of the girl during daytime. When the babysitter is with their daughter, they usually occupy the living room space to play, taking advantage of its extension. It should be noticed that the secondary bedroom is not used, surely due to its small size; it’s insufficient to host the daughter and an adult that can take care of her. In the afternoon the mother returns home to prepare lunch and to take care of her daughter, an activity that she must combine with work from home. At night she puts the girl in her crib, serves food and the couple goes to bed. This case reflects how the intense daily life of a young family overflows their domestic space and the overload of activities that falls on the mother’s daytime, resulting in a need for outside help and more space to raise a child.

The domestic activities of the couple that inhabits the fourth floor are mainly concentrated in the bedroom (sleeping, reading, studying, watching television), while the more less frequent social activities, which involve the participation of other people, occur in the living room and on the terrace. In this case, the daily use is consistent with the architectural design of the apartment, abiding the separation between more intimate and more public spaces.

The fifth floor corresponds to a couple who share little time in their domestic space, due to their demanding work routines. This is reflected in the lack of furniture in the bedroom and living room. The woman usually makes more use of the kitchen, although she spends most of her day outside the apartment. In the case of the man, as an athlete, he presents a particular routine, getting up at 4 AM to use the gym that is located in the common spaces of the building, using the living room to rest between his exercise routines, and integrating the domestic space into his particular work day.

Finally, the daily life of the couple of the sixth floor is also very consistent with the architectural design of it, in a similar way to the fourth floor. However, this couple makes greater use of their common spaces, integrating them into their domestic routine and spending a lot of time together in the kitchen and living room. In this case, the simplicity of the bedroom is explained by a greater importance of the living room and the kitchen in their routines.

The objective of these analysis are, in part, to show how an in-depth understanding of the quotidian and the systematic observation of these daily practices can lead us to insights that could guide the design of better domestic spaces; apartments and houses that are more effectively designed to accommodate the needs of its inhabitants. In the current context, where Covid-19 has radically changed the daily use of such spaces, the application of this type of analysis could help us advance in the design of domestic spaces that are more suitable for a more intensive use by their residents.

In this sense, we would like to conclude with some questions to think the design of future apartments:

Considering that spending too much time in the bedroom is a bad habit for our health, how is the apartment encouraging or at least allowing the prolonged use of other spaces?

How can we achieve a home space that could satisfy the “subjective” needs of a family, like the need for play of small kids?

How could apartment help to balance the load of domestic tasks between inhabitants?

How radical are the consequences of the change in our routine so far and in the future, because of quarantine? Are modern apartments prepared for this change?

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Joaquín Fermandois is a sociology graduate and researcher at LEC. He conducts educational research in the area of school libraries, reading promotion, art education and school spaces. He currently is undertaking a Master degree in digital learning in Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Andrés Señoret is a master in Urban Development and researcher at LEC. He currently conducts research related to urban sociability, public space, employment and methods of visual representation of urban and spatial phenomena.

Francisco Ibáñez is a sociology graduate and researcher at LEC . He currently works on projects regarding the impact of social media and technology on social dynamics.

The authors wish to express special acknowledgements to Josefina Buschmann and Daniela Jacob.

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References

Bourdieu, P., & Douglas, M. (1971). The berber house. Language, communication and education, 28.

Evans, R. (1971). The Rights of Retreat and the Rites of Exclusion: Notes Towards the Definition of Wall. Architectural Design, 41(6), 335-9.

Evans, R. (1978). Figures, doors and passages. Architectural Design, 48, 267-278.

Miller, D. (Ed.). (2001). Home possessions: material culture behind closed doors (pp. 1-231). Oxford: Berg.